Before even moving to California my cousin Matt and his wife Jan had recommend a backpacking trip in the Trinity Alps which they had been on when living in the Bay Area. Finally after almost 2 years living in California and only a single trip to the mountains, Megan and I arranged for a 4 day weekend with the plan to head up North and visit the Trinity Alps and the lakes Matt and Jan had liked so much. Two weeks before the trip however, I realized this place is 5+ hours away, which given our typical pace would take us at least 6. We also both admitted that although the lakes look nice, we’ve seen alpine lakes many times before in Colorado.
Also before moving to California, I had decided that, for some reason, I wanted to visit Yosemite only in the winter, reserving a summer time trip for sometime in the future since I didn’t like the idea of the huge crowds. Two winters have come and gone though and we still hadn’t made the trip, and I didn’t have a real reason for avoiding the summer anyway. So 3 days before leaving we checked a guide book out from the library, decided on a trail based solely on permit availability and hiking distance, and then spoke with the backcountry office the next morning to get formally registered.
Permit secured, we set a plan.
Pack Saturday morning and leave in time to pick up the permit and bear can before 5 PM at the ranger’s station. Camp in the backpacker’s campground in the Valley.
Sunday morning, take the 8:20 city bus from the Valley to our trailhead
Sunday through Tuesday, backpack from Big Oak Flat back to the Valley via Yosemite Falls.
Tuesday afternoon, drive back to Sunnyvale
This all fell apart when we left at 1:15, realized we wouldn’t arrive until 5:30, and then realized this meant we would also miss the city bus to our trailhead the following morning since the office opens at 9 for the permit, but we went anyway.
Pulling into Yosemite for the first time was very cool. Nearing the park we had been noticing a lot of Thank You signs to the firefighters in the area and lots of evidence of recent fires. As usual during the summer, much of California was on fire and the surrounding Yosemite area was not excluded from this. Unfortunately one of the first things we noticed in theValley was how smokey it was. Visibility was pretty low and my eyes and sinuses were feeling the poor air quality. Regardless we took in the first views of El Capitan and explored the Valley area by car for about half an hour trying to get our bearings. By this time everything in the Valley had closed for the evening except for the store and we decided to head to setup camp and sort out the permits and transportation in the morning.
Yosemite allows backcountry permit holders to sleep one night before and after their trip in the ‘backpackers campground’ which is where we planned to spent the night. According to the rangers these aren’t marked on official maps to help prevent people from taking advantage of the space and so armed with limited information and falling darkness we drove to the area the rangers had indicated.
After a bit of confusion on our end we noticed a small sign at the camp host site of the main campground directing us to the backpackers sites where we quickly found a spot near the out houses and pitched the tent. Ah the smell of the outdoors!
The next morning we work up lazily but early due to all the noise and activity of backpackers heading out on their trips and doing business nearby (outhouse). We packed up and made it to the cafe for coffee before heading to the office to pick up our permit and bear can. The backcountry ranger suggested we hitch a ride from the road by Camp 4 in order to reach the trailhead which was a 30 minute ride up the road outside of the park. So off we went, with Megan feeling very excited about the prospect of really hitchhiking! The ranger said we would most likely be picked up by an off duty park employee so I was more skeptical about if this would actually qualify.
Sure enough, with Megan and her little sign for HWY 120 we got picked up in no time. Our chauffeur wound up being a couple from Brazil by way of Wisconsin visiting Yosemite for the week on vacation. For the ride up we talked about adventures we had had climbing in Colorado (us) and surfing for weeks in Brazil (them). They seemed to be envious of our backpacking plan and the fact that we lived in CA, so close to the waves and mountains.
Once on the trail Megan and I continued this line of thought and agreed that on paper, and in real life, our lives are pretty awesome. Good prestigious sounding jobs which pay well, regular weekend trips to hotels in the city or on the beach, flying to CO to visit friends, and taking extended trips to backpack in Yosemite and soon to be in Chile! Things seemed to be going well. Then we realized our packs were heavy, the air was smokey, the sun was hot, and the trail which I had assumed would be all downhill into the Valley was most definitely, not, downhill.
Again our trail selection was based solely on distance and permit availability and beyond this I hadn’t done any other research before leaving. The description of the trailhead contained the phrase ‘valley rim’ so I naturally assumed we would be starting from the high point. And admittedly we likely didn’t climb that much, but being unprepared for it combined with packs loaded assuming easy hiking made for a tough day.
Around 5pm we were both overheated, tired and hungry, and the clouds which had been building all day began producing frequent thunder. While we were aiming to reach El Cap for the night we decided to make camp for about a mile from the summit. Megan looked exhausted and I was beat myself so it was the right call. We both felt much better shortly after a rest and some food, and setup a nice camp off the trail in a sheltered stand of trees. I built a quick fire and we spent the rest of the evening relaxing, reading, and watching an incredible sunset thanks in large part to all the smoke in the atmosphere.
The Valley’s many buildings and information signs all contain and abundance of bear warnings and considering our unpopular location I felt certain we would have bears in the area. We were careful with cooking and stashed our bear can a few hundred yards away but I was still on alert for animal noises once we extinguished the fire and settled down in the tent for the night.
Sure enough, within 10 minutes of settling down, we had a visitor up close to the tent wall. I quickly got up to scare it away, knowing that I was going to zip open the door and be face to face with a bear that sounded about 10 feet away. My heart was pumping, I unzipped the door, and Bambi, a tiny curious fawn was looking ready to come into the tent with us. I threw some sticks to scare it away and went back to bed but all throughout the night and into the morning, this fawn just wouldn’t leave us alone. Twice I was actually able to hit it with sticks, and I was getting up so frequently, always a bit unsure if it would still be the deer, that Megan started to sleep right through my thrashing and throwing of stones. The next morning the deer was still hanging around our camp. It was very curious and just kept coming back.
A part of the push yesterday was to make it to the next water source, which by stopping early we were still a mile or so away from. So we broke camp and hiked on, stopping to fill up in Ribbon Creek, before hiking on to the summit of El Capitan. Just in time. The total solar eclipse was happening this morning and although we weren’t in the path of totality, or prepared with glasses for that matter, we were still expecting better than 70% and with some patchy cloud cover in the area we had a perfect viewing point to catch some glimpses of the rare event.
Megan and I agreed that the light was very unusual and at one point during peak coverage, a wild ancestral dance and guttural battle cry came out of Megan that can only be attributed to the celestial phenomenon. Oddly, a movie of the event turned out too shadowy and muffled to even make out the person in the frame…
Originally during the planning for all this, we intended to spend 2 nights in the backcountry, and return home late on Tuesday evening. With only 8 miles back to the Valley though, the idea to spend our third night in the backpacker’s campground and do a morning day hike sounded more appealing. So we left the summit and hiked on to the top of Yosemite Falls, where we planned to lunch and then continue to the floor below.
The falls were crowded and once on the trail down, the crowd factor became much more apparent. The scenery was great though. Monday was just as hot, and we were both swatting at bugs most of the day. By the time we were a mile or two from the base of the climb, we were overheated and hurting from out packs. Megan especially was not having fun. We made it to Camp 4 though and re hydrated and lazed around for a while resting our legs.
I have come across references to Camp 4 a lot over the years, in climbing magazines and trip reports, and I must say it is in a convenient location for climbers, but it was kind of a dump, with a super long first come first serve line to boot.
That night we sat out and watched two headlamps high up on the Washington Column, climbing in the dark.
In the morning we were both very sore, and the smoke from the nearby fires had come back strong in the Valley. We strolled around the village drinking coffee and took a bit of a driving tour around the rest of the Valley. Unfortunately the smoke impacting the air quality so much that we couldn’t make out more than the general shape of any of the Valley’s most prominent formations. We did spend some time soaking feet in the Merced river, trying to spot climbers and well known features on El Cap, but with little luck. By 11 we were ready to leave, very sore from carrying to much, and a bit bummed about all the smoke but very excited to return in the winter and following spring when cooler temperatures and clear air can be expected.